Emma blazed once more into the attack. “I supposed that’s why you came. Spying for Ben.”
“I simply came to find out where you were and how you were.”
“Be sure to give him all the ghoulish details. It doesn’t matter to us, and he won’t take any notice, anyway.”
“Emma…”
“Don’t forget, he is no ordinary, run-of-the-mill parent, as you are only too fond of telling me.”
“Emma, will you listen…!”
The last word was scarcely out of his mouth, when the door behind him burst open and a slurred and cheerful voice broke in. “Well, what a nice little chat you two are having!”
Robert wheeled. In the open doorway stood the young man who had played the part of the stuffy stockbroker in Daisies on the Grass. Only now he was stuffy no longer, but quite simply very drunk, and to steady himself hung on to the top of the doorway, like a monkey swinging on a trapeze. His legs, buckling slightly, did nothing to dispel this impression.
“Hello, darling,” he said to Emma. He let go of the door and weaved into the tiny kitchen, rendering it unbearably crowded. With the palms of his hands flat on the table, he leaned forward to kiss Emma. The kiss was loud and smacking, but did not come within six inches of her face.
“We’ve got callers,” he observed. “And a bloody great car parked outside. It adds great tone to the neighbourhood.” His legs buckled again, and for a second his weight was supported solely by his arms. He smiled expansively at Robert. “What’s your name?”
“He’s called Robert Morrow,” said Emma shortly, “and I’ll make you some coffee.”
“I don’t want coffee. I do not want coffee.” He raised his fist to the words, and once more his legs let him down. This time Robert caught him, and hauled him upright.
“Thanks, old boy. Very civil of you. Emma, how about a little sustenance? Feed the inner man; you know the routine. I do hope you’ve asked this nice chap Robert to stay for dinner. There’s also a toothsome blonde in the other room, chatting Christopher up to no mean tune. Know anything about her?”
Nobody bothered to answer him. Emma turned back to the cooker, took the lid off the kettle and put it on again. Johnny Rigger stared at her back and then at Robert, apparently waiting for life, with all its confusions, to be explained to him.
Robert could not trust himself to speak. He yearned to pick up this shambling drunk by the scruff of his neck and chuck him somewhere; preferably in the dust-bin, where he had just dumped the unsavoury contents of the trash can. Then he would come back to deal with Emma in the same way, flinging her into the back of his car, driving her to London, to Porthkerris, to Paris—anywhere, away from this terrible basement, from the theatre, from the depressing suburban town.
He stared at her stubborn back view, willing her to turn round and face up to him. But she did not move, and her thin neck, and her shorn head, and the droop of her shoulders, all of which, he knew, should touch on his sympathy, did nothing but infuriate him.
He said, at last, formally, “This is simply a waste of everybody’s time. I think Jane and I should go.”
Emma accepted this in silence, but Johnny was full of protests. “Oh, you must stay, old chap. Stay and have something to eat…”
But Robert had pushed past him and was already halfway down the flagged passage. He found the other two deep in conversation, and quite unaware of any sort of drama. Christopher was saying, “Yes, it’s a wonderful play. And what a part! You can build on to it, yet never overload it, never interfere in any way with production…”
(And he remembered bitterly the old crack about actors. “Now, let’s talk about you, my friend. What did you think of my performance?”)
“I trust you’re not discussing Daisies on the Grass.”
Christopher looked round. “Good God, no! Present Laughter. What’s Emma doing?”
“Your friend has just arrived back.”
“Johnny? Yes, we just saw him tottering by.”
“He’s drunk.”
“He quite often is. We fill him up with black coffee and shovel him into his bed. He’s right as rain in the morning. Most unfair, really.”
“Is there any particular reason why he should have to be here with you and Emma?”
Christopher raised his eyebrows. “Every reason.” His voice was cool. “It’s his flat. He got here first. I was second. Emma made a very cosy third.”
There was a pause in the conversation. Jane, sensing the worst sort of conflict, broke tactfully in.
“Robert, it is getting late…” She picked up her bag and her gloves, and got up off the divan. “… Perhaps we should be going.”
“But you haven’t had your coffee. Or beer, or anything. What is Emma doing?”
“Doing her best to prop up Mr. Rigger,” Robert told him. “I suggest you go and help her. His legs don’t seem to be at their most reliable.”
Christopher, shrugging, acknowledged this. He uncurled his length from the low chair in which he had been sitting, and stood up. “Well, if you really feel you have to go…”
“I think we should. Thank you for…”
The words died out. There was nothing to thank him for. Christopher looked amused and Jane once again came to Robert’s rescue.
“… thank you for your wonderful performance this evening. We won’t forget it.” She held out her hand. “Good-bye.”
“Good-bye. And good-bye, Robert.”
“Good-bye, Christopher.” And then he had to make himself say it. “Look after Emma.”
They drove with unlawful speed back to London. On the motorway the needle of the speedometer crept up and up. Eighty, ninety, a hundred …
Jane said, “You’re going to get into trouble.”
“I already am,” said Robert shortly.
“Did you have a row with Emma?”
“Yes.”
“I thought you were looking a little fraught. What was it about?”
“Snooping. And moralising. And interfering. And trying to make a basically intelligent girl see the smallest glimmer of sense. She looked awful, too. She looked ill.”
“She’ll be all right.”
“Last time I saw her, she was brown as a Gipsy, with hair to her waist and a sort of bloom about her, like a delicious ripe fruit.” He remembered the pleasure of kissing her good-bye. “Why do people have to do such dreadful things to themselves?”
“I don’t know,” said Jane. “Perhaps because of Christopher.”
“How did you get on with him? I mean, apart from falling in love with him.”
She ignored this. “He is clever. He is single-minded. He is ambitious. I think he will go far. But alone.”
“You mean, without Emma.”
“I’d say that.”
Even at one in the morning London was alive with lights and traffic. They turned down into Sloane Street, circled Sloane Square, took the narrow road that led to Jane’s mews. Outside her little house, he killed the engine of the Alvis, and it was very quiet. Street lamps shone on to the cobbles, on to the gleaming bonnet of the car, on to Jane’s blonde and shining head. Robert was suddenly very tired. He began to reach for a cigarette, but Jane was there first. She put the cigarette into his mouth and lit it for him. In that instant her eyes became large and mysteriously shadowed, and there was a small and beguiling shadow, like a smudge, below the curve of her lower lip.
She snapped out the lighter. He said, “It’s been a bloody awful evening. And I’m sorry.”
“It always makes a change. It was interesting.”
He pulled off his cap and dropped it onto the back seat. “Do you suppose,” he said, “that they’re living together?”
“Darling, I wouldn’t know.”
“But she’s in love with him.”
“I would say so.”
For a little they were silent. Then Robert stretched, flexing himself after the long drive. He said, “We never got any dinner, did we? I don’t know about you, but I’
m hungry.”
“If you want, I’ll cook you scrambled eggs. And pour you a big cold Scotch-on-the-rocks.”
“You’re twisting my arm…”
They laughed, quietly. Night time laughter, he thought. Pillow laughter. He put his left hand up and around her neck, slid his fingers up into her hair, and leaned forward to kiss her mouth. She tasted sweet and fresh and cool. Her lips parted, and he threw his cigarette away, and pulled her tightly and closely into his arms.
After a little, he took his mouth from hers. “What are we waiting for, Jane?”
“One thing.”
He smiled. “What’s that?”
“Me. I don’t want to start something that isn’t ever going to be finished. I don’t want to be hurt again. Even for you, Robert, and God knows how fond I am of you.”
He said, “I won’t hurt you,” and meant it, and kissed the shadow under her mouth.
“And please,” she said, “no more Littons.”
He kissed her eyes, and the end of her short nose. “It’s a promise. No more Littons.”
He let her go then, and they got out of the car, and closed the doors as quietly as they had laughed together. And Jane found her key, and Robert took it from her and opened the door, and they went in, and Jane turned on the light, and started up the narrow stair, and Robert closed the door, gently, behind them.
9
One of the delights of the big old house in Milton Gardens was living there in the summer. At the end of a warm and stuffy June day, and after the frustrations of a snail’s-pace, petrol-laden journey back down the Kensington High Street, it was a positive physical pleasure to come in through the front door and slam it with happy finality behind you. The house always felt cool. It smelt of flowers and wax-polish, and in June the chestnut trees were out and so thick with leaves and pink and white blossom that the surrounding terraces of houses were shrouded from sight, sounds of all traffic were muffled, and only the occasional aeroplane, passing overhead, broke the evening calm.
To-day was a classic example of this particular relief. There was thunder about, and since morning the temperature had steadily risen as the storm clouds gathered. Beneath this doom-like atmosphere, the city sweltered. By now the parks were dusty and the trampled grass turning brown, and the air about as refreshing as a draught of used bath-water. But here, at home, Helen had the sprinklers working on the lawn, and a gust of sweet, damp air swept through the open door at the end of the hall, and greeted Robert as he came indoors.
He dropped his hat on the hall chair, picked up his letters, called “Helen?”
She wasn’t in the kitchen. He went down the hall and out of the door and down the steps to the terrace and found her there, with a tea-tray and a book—unread—and a basket of mending. She wore a sleeveless cotton dress and a faded pair of espadrilles, and the sun had brought freckles out, big as paint spots, across her nose.
He came across the grass towards her, shedding the jacket of his suit.
She said, “You have caught me, doing nothing.”
“And very nice too.” He slung the jacket over the back of a painted wrought-iron chair, and collapsed beside her. “What a day! Anything left in that teapot?”
“No, but I can make you some more.”
“Why don’t I?” said Robert automatically, but without notable enthusiasm.
She did not reply to this hypothetical question, simply got up and took the teapot indoors. There was a plate of biscuits, and he took one and began to eat it, pulling his tie loose with the other hand. Beneath the sprinklers the lawn lay thick and green. It needed cutting again. He leaned back and shut his eyes.
It was now six weeks since he had been to Brookford to find Emma Litton, and in all that time there had been no word from her. After some discussion with Marcus and Helen he had written to Ben, telling him that Emma was staying with Christopher Ferris, whom she had re-met in Paris. That she was working in the Repertory Theatre in Brookford. That she was well. He could not, in truth, say more. Surprisingly, Ben had acknowledged this, not directly, to Robert, but as a scribbled footnote to a letter to Marcus. The purpose of the letter itself was purely business, typewritten on the impressive engraved paper of the Ryan Memorial Museum of Fine Arts. The retrospective Litton Exhibition was now over. In every way it had been a resounding success. Now, the new exhibition—a posthumous collection of drawings of a Puerto Rican genius who had lately died in dismal circumstances in a Greenwich Village garret, was well under way, and he and Melissa were taking the opportunity of a trip to Mexico. He intended to start painting again. He did not know when he would be returning to London. He remained, always, Marcus’ Ben. And then, under the signature, and in Ben’s own indecipherable scrawl:
“Had a letter from R. Morrow. Please thank him. Emma always fond of Christopher. Only hope his manners have improved.”
Marcus showed this to Robert. “I don’t know what you expected,” he said, dryly, “but this is what you have got.”
So it was over. For the first time Robert found himself in whole-hearted agreement with his sister Helen. The Littons were brilliant, unpredictable and charming. But they refused to conform to any pre-set behaviour pattern and they would not help themselves. So they were impossible.
To his surprise, he found that Emma was easy to forget. He could put her out of his mind as ruthlessly as an old trunkful of junk, relegated to the darkest recesses of some distant, dusty attic. And his life immediately became so full that the void left by her going was, almost at once, filled by more worthwhile pursuits.
At the Gallery, they were furiously busy. His days were a round of prospective clients, foreign visitors, and eager young artists carrying folios which bulged with their unsalubrious paintings. Would Bernstein mount an exhibition for them? Would Bernstein back this flame of new talent? The answer was usually, No, Bernstein’s would not, but Marcus was a kindly man, and it was a house rule that no young man was returned to Glasgow or Bristol or Newcastle, or wherever it was he lived, without a good meal in his stomach, and the price of his return fare in the pocket of genuinely work-stained jeans.
Robert found that his vitality leapt to meet these demands, and, running at full speed, his energy could not—or would not—slow down. He could not bear to find himself doing nothing, and deliberately filled his leisure time with extraneous diversions, and a surprising number of them were involved with Jane Marshall.
The fact that their working hours did not always coincide put him off not at all. Sometimes he would call in for a drink at her little house, on the way home from the Gallery, and find her still in an apron, sewing braid onto yards of curtain, or working out the intricacies of a scallopped pelmet on graph paper. Sometimes she was out of town, and then he would fill the evening with furious physical labour, digging the garden or mowing the lawn.
One week-end he and Jane went down to Bosham, where Jane’s brother had a small cottage, and kept a catamaran moored out on the choppy waters of the Hard. They sailed all Sunday and there was a stiff breeze and a bright, burning sun, and at the end of the day, sleepy with all the fresh air, they sat in the village pub and drank draught bitter and played shove ha’penny, and drove back to London very late, with the roof of the Alvis down, and wind blowing scraps of cloud across the face of the stars.
Once more Helen started saying, “I think you should marry her.”
Robert ignored the nudging suspicion that he was behaving badly, and only said, “Perhaps I will.”
“But when? What are you waiting for?”
He did not answer because he did not know. He only knew that this was not the time to plan; or assess; or to start to analyse the feelings that he had for Jane.
* * *
Now, he was disturbed, by Helen, returning with his tea-tray. She set it down, and the iron table grated on the pavings as she pulled it towards him. She said, “Marcus phoned at lunch-time.”
Marcus had had to return to Scotland. The whisky-loving Scottish baronet, who had
been so anxious to part with his art treasures, was being baulked by his son, who would presumably inherit the heirlooms and did not want them sold out of hand. Or, if they were to be sold, he wanted three times as much for them as his thirsty father was prepared to ask. After a great deal of expensive telephoning, Marcus had reluctantly decided that another visit must be paid north of the border. Business must always come before personal comforts and preferences, and if, to lay his hands on those pictures, he had to sleep in damp beds and icy rooms and eat appallingly-cooked food, then he was ready to do so.
“How is he getting on?”
“He was reserved. No doubt speaking from some soaring baronial hall, with the old Laird listening from one end of the room, and the young Laird listening from the other.”
“Has he got the pictures?”
“No, but he will. If not all, then some of them…” She went away from him, across the grass, to move the sprinkler. “The Raeburn he is determined on,” she said, over her shoulder. “He’ll go to any price.”
Robert poured his tea, and began to read the evening paper. When Helen came back, he handed it to her open at a middle page.
“What’s this?” she asked.
“That girl. Dinah Burnett…”
“Who is she?”
“You should know her face by now. She’s a young actress with an efficient publicity agent. Every time you open a paper or a magazine, there’s a picture of her perched on a piano, or cuddling a kitten or something equally obnoxious.”
Helen made a comic face at the thrusting, sexy photograph, and read the caption aloud.
Dinah Burnett, the red-head who made such an impact on the TV series Detective, is in rehearsal now for the new Amos Monihan play The Glass Door, her first serious stake in legitimate theatre. “I’m scared,” she told our special reporter. “But so very proud to have been chosen for this wonderful play.” Miss Burnett is twenty-two and comes from Barnsley.
“I didn’t know there was a new Amos Monihan play on the stocks. Who’s producing?”
“Mayo Thomas.”
“Then she must be good. Extraordinary, what talent can lurk behind really very stupid faces. But why did you suddenly show this to me?”